228 CHAPTER EIGHTtributivelawsincumbentoneverymaleIsraelite—anoccasionaltitheofcrops,
the obligation to leave parts of fields for the poor, the provision of interest-
free loans, and periodic cancellation of debts and redistribution of land
(roughly, that is, the progra mof the protode mocratic tyrants of the Greek
cities).^41 The obvious intention of these laws is to avoid the proliferation of
relationshipsofdependencywithinthecommunityofIsrael:“forthechildren
of Israel aremyslaves,” God says (Leviticus 25:55), not, as the rabbinic exe-
getes helpfully added, the slaves of slaves (B. Qiddushin 22b). And though
the Pentateuchal legislators acknowledged that debt bondage continued to
exist, they tried to limit its effects (Exodus 21).
The local community has no place in the Pentateuch’s redistributive pro-
gram. Like Israel’s relationship with God, redistribution is personal and na-
tional. In the main, the Mishnah and Tosefta retain the Bible’s emphases,
refining,sometimesmitigating,sometimesextending,alwayscomplicating,its
legislationconcerningthepoortithe,theseptennialcancellationofdebts,the
leavingofcornersoffields,andtheprovisionofinterest-freeloans.Inallthese
cases, the rabbinic legislation is directed at the individual Jew as member of
the nation of Israel; the local community does not enter into the discussion.
Of course, the nation of Israel no longer had any real existence, and many of
the rabbinic laws had no conceivable practical application. That there was
any mechanism for the collection and distribution of the poor tithe after 135,
for instance, is unlikely, to say the least. But the rabbis’ utopian vision, their
Israel of the mind, was remarkably like that of the authors of the Pentateuch:
Israel as a single nation united by their obedience to, their exclusive relation-
ship of dependency with, their one God.
Yet there are in the Mishnah and especially in the Tosefta the beginnings
of the idea that the town (’irin rabbinic Hebrew)^42 constitutes a meaningful
religious entity. Thisconception in no way emerges fromrabbinic exegesis of
the Bible, so its appearance may constitute an attempt, clearly at this stage
halting and ambivalent, to assert control over an institution that by the third
century was becoming important in their circles. It may be no coincidence
that it was in just this period that rabbis or, perhaps more accurately, men at
the fringes of the rabbinic movement were beginning to work as religious
functionaries in the larger country towns (see chapter 3), and the majority of
the rabbis began to live in the cities, both places in which communities and
synagogues were concentrated.
ofthesectariancommunityinornearrabbiniccirclesatatimewhenitwasbeingwidelyadopted
by the local community; cf. M. Avot 3:6. For some rather harmonistic discussion, see S. Safrai,
“The Holy Assembly of Jerusalem,”Zion22 (1957): 183–93.
(^41) As was long ago observed by Morton Smith,Palestinian Parties, pp. 96–112.
(^42) On the meaning of the term (a nucleated nonurban settlement and, less certainly, a “villa,”
that is, a large farmstead), see the discussion in Safrai,Jewish Community, pp. 34–38.